Re: Indirect questions

[John Cowan <cowan@DRV.CBC.COM>]

la xorxes. cusku di'e

> I suppose we need to know what {danfu} is supposed to mean.
> I think that you either have {<text1> danfu <text2>} or {<du'u1>
> danfu <du'u2>}, or maybe we can have  both, but I don't think
> you can have a mix. If I'm right then you must have either:
> {ko'a djuno le danfu be la'e lu ... li'u} or {ko'a djuno la'e le danfu
> be lu ... li'u}, because the x2 of djuno is a du'u, not a text.

I think "danfu" is very broad; the x1 or the x2 could be a person
as well.  I agree that "danfu" works better if the x1 and the x2
are, er, of the same object class.

>  >I take {xu do badri} to mean
> >
> >   Bring it about that for every x, a truthvalue of {do badri},
> >     I know that x is truthvalue of {do badri}.
>
> That's asking for too much. For example, you are asking
> the person not only that they respond with the truth but that
> they convince you that they're saying the truth (otherwise
> you wouldn't _know_ that what they say it true). Maybe that
> really is implicit in questions? I don't know.

It not only asks too much, but it fails to capture many common uses
of questions.  For example, I may ask "Is p true?" when I already
know that p (or that not-p), in order to test the listener's
truthfulness.  On a psychological test, this appears in the form
"Have you ever hated your parents?"; in domestic life, "Did you
eat the cookies?".

> I would have said {xu do badri} means: repeat this
> statement replacing the question word so as to make it
> a true statement. The replacement for {xu} is in a first
> instance either {na} or {ja'a}, and ususally you will repeat
> by using {go'i}.

I agree.

--
John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban